Ours is the Color of
by nanirain
Summary: Oneshots and achronological drabbles of the Greens. Rated M on a'cuza teenage kids have filthy mouthes.
1. Youth and Inexperience

_Green is the color most commonly associated in with youth, also often is used to describe anyone young, inexperienced, probably by the analogy to immature and unripe fruit._

* * *

Some days he suspected that she, well… _suspected_. That she knew about _the change_. But whenever he stopped to give that serious thought, he decided that would be giving her too much credit. Buttercup preferred to keep things simple, black and white: it was a good day, or a bad day. I hurt you, or you surrender. I trust you with my life, or I'm going to fucking kill you the next time you show your face. Hers was a world of simple binaries. Moreover, she hated change. So, unless someone had _told _her (impossible, because even he hadn't fucking told anyone about _the change)_ she would never come to the conclusion on her own. That just wasn't the way Buttercup's mind worked. She wasn't into that girly, over-thinking shit. It was one of the reasons they got along so well.

But he'd been noticing her giving him strange looks for the past month, and she was installing tiny amounts of distance between them: both physically and… _not_. Where his dirty jokes usually earned eye rolls or half-heartedly masked snickers, now they were falling flat around her. Where the two of them used to make jeering remarks and knock each other bodily in the hallways – denting lockers in their destructive wake and sending normal students scrambling for cover, recently it felt like she'd been careful not to touch him at all. Butch couldn't make heads or tails of it. Buttercup was usually game for all that jerky, horse-shitting play.

It wasn't until one Autumn day at soccer practice that everything became agonizingly clear. Mitch was following Buttercup around like a nervous dog, not even pretending to play the game, guarding her like she was his fucking prize to keep from the world.

Buttercup's best-friend-turned-ex, Mitch had spent the last six months doing nothing as far as Butch could tell but trying to convince Buttercup to give their relationship a second try. Butch had never really liked Mitch to begin with, with his gangly angled limbs and his fifty-year-old sailor's voice, aggravated by the cigarette that was always hanging out of his mouth (he'd even gotten Buttercup to try a few when they dated, but she didn't like it for the smell) his shaggy skater-boy hair. Butch had never really liked him. The same way he didn't like most normal boys who put on tough-guy attitudes; they always seemed so pathetic and comical. But ever since _the change_ happened, it felt like every day was like a contest to see how long he could go without caving Mitch's face in with whatever happened to be on hand: A baseball bat. His fist. An algebra textbook.

Butch tried to distract himself with the game. The two super-humans were always put on different teams, for obvious reasons. And they both played with special rules. In other words, they were kept from killing the other players. They couldn't tackle anyone, and they could only kick the ball so hard – a fucking radar speedometer had even been installed on the field to test them, the kind that was used for bridges and highways. And they were both playing under strict limits on how much game-time they were allowed to spend directly handling the ball, otherwise it quickly devolved into a two-(superhu)man game between the two of them, and 'there was no need to waste all your teammates' time just because you two have superpowers' as Coach had put it.

But Butch's team was down in this game, so he tried to get away with participating a little more than he was allowed. Coach didn't bark out any punishments, in fact he seemed to be turning a blind eye to the whole thing - in the spirit of keeping the game going and interesting.

And Mitch was still guarding Buttercup.

Butch slid his foot beneath an opponent's cleat, smoothly snatching the ball away just as the other kid was leaning in to drive it into Butch's goal. Finding air and no ball, the student kicked himself flat onto his back. Butch took a moment to sneer down at the shocked face, and then kicked the ball straight across the field and into the other side's goal. Students, including the goalie, dove out of the way rather than trying to block it, for fear of bodily harm. The speedometer blinked rapidly on an obnoxious number, something like _85 mph_ which was well over the limit. Coach frowned slightly, but said nothing. Buttercup would have been the only one who could have contested it. But she hadn't, of course. Because she was still on the other side of Mitch.

The goalie kicked the ball out, and the opposition started to run with it. Butch jogged casually down the field, trying to ignore the creeping inkling from behind his back that Mitch was standing closer to her. He pivoted around a teammate, threatening to come in and intercept a pass before weaving out at the last second (just to fuck with the opponent, who jerked back in fear). Butch stole a glance in their direction. And Mitch was still guarding her.

Buttercup's team scored a goal.

And Mitch was still guarding her.

Their goalie kicked the ball out. One of Butch's teammates, a reedy boy with a mop of blond hair, who was actually not-terrible kicked down the field for a pace or two.

And Mitch was still guarding Buttercup.

His blonde teammate – Butch never could be bothered to remember his name – caught sight of Butch and, after a moment's hesitation, decided to take a chance at teamwork with the Superhuman. He kicked the ball over.

Butch stopped it almost instinctively, receiving the pass. He tried to train his eyes on the black and white pattern, to think about this stupid game that didn't even take a hint of exertion because Buttercup wasn't playing. Because Mitch was still – fucking – guarding her.

"Butch!" Tom yells from downfield, "over here! I'm open!" Tom stood waving his arms in a wide arc, just behind and a bit to the left of where Buttercup and Mitch were lightheartedly trying to shake and cover each other, respectively. (And it irks Butch endlessly that today she didn't even truly try).

Tom kept yelling, thinking Butch was gonig to make the pass. After all, from where he stood it looked like the RowdyRuff's vibrant gaze was boring straight into him.

Butch made a sudden decision, stopping the ball mid-field. Several teammates skid past him with confused faces. He drove his foot as far back as he could, and shot the ball downfield. Straight into Mitch's ass.

He was gratified by a surprised, pain-laced cry. Mitch crumpled to the ground, cupping his rear. A couple teammates snickered involuntarily. Mostly though, they stopped to stare at Butch. The coach's eyes locked on him like a fly to dead meat.

Butch shrugged, not bothering to hide his mile-wide smirk. "Oops. Guess I missed."

Before the Coach could even open his mouth, Buttercup is on him, moving faster than he'd seen her do in a while. And when her hand closed on the collar of his shirt, his first thought was actually a flare of surprise. It's the closest she'd been to him in a month.

"Are you _fucking_ kidding me," she snarled.

Butch gave her one of his best smirks. "S'wrong, Princess? Twisted up that someone put a scratch on your little lap dog?" He taunted her, but mostly he was still crowing over the fact that Mitch is rolling in the dirt, trying not to cry.

Buttercup glanced back, just a casual little toss of her eyes, before she locked her heated gaze back on Butch. She seemed angrier that _Butch _hurt him than the fact that Mitch had been hurt. After all, it wasn't like she was standing over the would be tough-guy, making sure his tailbone wasn't fractured. She was here, with her hands around Butch's neck. And Butch took some pride in that too.

"Come with me," she bit out, and then proceeded to not give him much of a choice about it. Her fist tightened on his collar, she yanked him straight through the cloud line. By the time she let go, he was still just catching his breath. Butch coughed dramatically, already grinning – his mouth a violent, jagged line across his face. He rubbed at his neck where the fabric had rendered his skin raw - more for show than anything else. It wasn't as if that could actually hurt him.

"Geez, Buttercup. If you wanted to be alone with me, all you had to do was ask."

"_Shut the fuck up_."

Something about her voice raised the air on his arms. Butch dropped the grin and took a good look at her. Buttercup looked angry. Upset. She dragged her hand through her inky bob and made a fist in it, taking a long, deep breath.

Butch frowned, realizing that he was watching something rare: Buttercup thinking. Not to say that Buttercup was dumb. Usually she just knew exactly how she felt and what she had to say about it. Buttercup-at-a-loss was a strange, almost disturbing sight. Butch was about to ask her if she needed some time alone when she looked up sharply, her expression a mix of suspicion, anger, and maybe a shadow of fear.

"Are you _in love_ with me?"

Butch stared. His body went numb. After a long moment, his mouth finally found his tongue again. "Wuh - the _fuck_? What kind of fucking question is that?"

"Just. Answer." Buttercup ground out. And yes, that was fear behind her ire, and if Butch had been unsure what answer she'd wanted to hear from him, that glimpse removed all doubt.

Instead, he stayed silent. Somehow, the lie that should have come as easily as a Labrador to a fucking bone wouldn't come. What should he say? _No_, of course. _Tell her 'no' you fucking twit. But what if _ - a tiny part of his brain kept nagging _– what _if…?

Buttercup decked him in the eye. Hard. Butch reeled back.

"The _fuck_! I didn't say anything yet, you crazy bitch!"

"Exactly. Which means the answer isn't no!" Buttercup cried. "If it's fucking 'no' then just say it! Say it, Butch!"

"You're insane," Butch snarled. "I don't fucking need this." But he didn't leave.

"God _damn_ it, you fucking A." Buttercup hissed. "After all these –! I can't believe I -! You! How _could _you?"

Butch spreads his hands, "I don't know, alright?" Realizing belatedly that he was supposed to be keeping up the pretense of denial. But who was he kidding? He'd been trying to deny it to himself for months, _the change_, but there wasn't anything for it. He was in love with Buttercup. And apparently, now everyone knew it – even her.

"No, it's really not." Buttercup snapped. "And _fuck_ you for not being able to lie to me."

Butch laughed, a deep, barking sound that he set off right in her face. "You're one fucked up bitch, you know that Buttercup? So I am - so what? Don't ask me how I ever got to feel this way about a twisted girl like you."

She punched him, again. This time, Butch punched her back. They got into a fight. Not one of their playful brawls, but a real, true fight like they hadn't had since they were children. She left Butch with a bloody eye, torn rotator cuff, and a slightly broken heart. He was pretty sure he'd fractured her wrist, and torn a few crucial tendons in her left knee. As for her heart, he had no fucking idea. Except for the fact that as she'd slammed bodily into him to drive a fist up and under his ribs, he'd felt a hot, salty wetness smear from her cheek onto his lips. But it could have been blood, or spit for all he knew. (He'd wiped his hand against the taste of it, but the inside of his palm hadn't come back red. And after that, she'd been too busy trying to beat the crap out of him for him to remember anything else).


	2. Bubblebaths (Or Youth and Inexperience2)

A/N: Uploaded, and it came with a bunch of like HMTL text. So had to edit and re-post. Sorry if anyone gets two emails or if some of it got left in accidentally (that's what the random gibberish is if you encounter it).

"_There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them._" - Sylvia Plath

* * *

Butch dragged ass back to the apartment, his green comet tail pulsing softly behind him like a dying ember, or the pain throbbing in the back of his head. The RowdyRuff Pad he and his brothers shared was lit up in the dark cityscape of Townsville, and let himself into his room through the window, not even bothering to open it. The pane gave way easily and all at once, raining around him like little bits of shine.

"M'back," he croaked.

Boomer appeared in the open doorway, his AbercromieFitch worthy mop of platinum hair teasing into his curious baby blues. Blonde eyebrows disappeared into said mop as Boomer laid eyes on his bloody brother. "…'Sup?" the Blue Ruff asked.

Butch shrugged, then gritted his teeth against the screaming in his rotator cuff. Evidentially, chemical-X hadn't finished healing up his abused shoulder. "None of your business, punk."

Behind Boomer's shoulder, a smoldering red gaze appeared in the hallway. Butch raised his chin in acknowledgement to Brick.

His red brother just stared, stony gaze moving from the Butch's bruised face, to the glass on the floor. Some of the fragments were smeared with Butch's blood. "Clean that up," Brick said cooly, then turned around and stalked back to whatever scheming he'd been up to.

"Yeah - Good talk, Leader Man." Butch called after him.

Brick flipped him the finger as he headed back downstairs.

"Seriously, though – who'd you get into a fight with?" Boomer asked.

"Well, I was in the middle of my day when… Oh, wait. I'm sorry, since when do I have to tell you… anything?" Butch said, pushing past Boomer and stripping off his lightly scorched sports jersey as he did so. He grimaced as his shoulder protested yet again, cursing Chemical-X for not working any faster.

"You tried to grope someone in front of Blossom again, didn't you?" Boomer pressed, sitting on Butch's bed.

Butch sent his brother a nasty look, shucking off his shoes and socks.

"Alright, alright," Boomer said, holding up his hands in surrender. He grinned boyishly. Butch couldn't escape the suspicion that the blond was enjoying himself a bit more than he should have been. "Well, bright side: at least you beat the rain," Boomer said cheerfully, holding an arm out through Butch's shattered window. His palm opened, catching the quick, gray rain that went from a light smattering to an all-out downpour in a matter of seconds.

Boomer brought his hand back inside and flicked the cold rain at Butch, who swiftly punched Boomer in the gut. Boomer keeled, platinum hair flopping. "Fuck," he coughed, scowling, "you're in a bad mood." He paused when he saw the look on Butch's face.

The green brother was staring out the window, distracted. The cold Autumn rain speckled on his bare chest, though he seemed not to notice it. Butch watched the rainfall, as a cold evening chill slid through the window and wrapped itself around him. Townsville suburbs were father from Townsville High than the boys' apartment. Depending on how fast she flew, and he suspected that wouldn't be very fast after their fight, Buttercup would get caught in this rain.

Butch's insides curled slightly at the idea of it.

Well, she deserved it, didn't she? Ridiculous bitch. "Yeah, that's right," Butch growled softly, his eyes staring out into the gray. "Fuck you."

* * *

"You got into a fight!?"

"Ease up, Princess," Buttercup grumbled, tossing her keys onto the counter. The autumn downpour had soaked through her clothes, but apparently hadn't been enough to wash away the evidence of her fight with Butch.

"Buttercup," Blossom started, setting her book face down on the couch.

"I'm going upstairs," Buttercup said quickly, cutting off Blossom's questions, her lecture.

"_Buttercup_!"

Buttercup dashed to the top of the stairs in a flash, escaping one sister only to be promptly enveloped by the other.

"Welcome home!" Bubbles chirped, wrapping Buttercup up in her arms, not even flinching at the blood and rubble smeared over every inch of her. Bubbles also ignored Buttercup's pained groan.

"Not now, Bubbles. I need-"

"A bath," Bubbles chirped. "Don't worry, I started one for you."

"What? No."

'Yes." Bubbles smiled brightly, starting to guide Buttercup down the hall, toward the girls' shared bathroom. And maybe it was because she was still recovering, but Bubbles was freakishly stronger than Buttercup had ever remembered her sugar sister to be.

Inside the bathroom, warm air and the scent of green apple bubble bath engulfed her - the same kind Professor used when they were kids. It colored the tub with a skimming surface of foam green suds.

"Bubbles, I don't want-"

"Not want," Bubbles said happily, checking the water temperature with her hand and then turning off the running tap. "Need."

Buttercup glowered. Bubbles blinked back pleasantly, impervious to a sight that had most people peeing their pants. "Don't make me undress you," Bubbles said playfully, tugging on Buttercup's soccer jersey, pausing as the battered article started to rip away at her slight touch, revealing the strap of Buttercup's sports bra.

Buttercup flinched away, remembering the way the fabric had tightened around her when Butch had fisted it in his hands. "Alright, fine," she said, a bit too quickly. She started peeling the jersey off entirely.

Bubbles tilted her head girlishly, blonde side-pony bobbing, gave her a sweet smile and then disappeared, closing the door behind her.

Buttercup stared after her blonde sister, then thought about Blossom getting ready to stalk up the stairs and realized Bubbles had given her the perfect excuse to not deal with Little Miss Perfect. The Utonium sisters were close. They shared each other's makeup, clothes, and sometimes even slept in each others' beds. But the last time Buttercup checked she was still allowed to take a bath in privacy. On second thought, she turned the lock – just in case.

Then, she walked over to the sink and turned on the tap full blast. It wouldn't keep her sisters from being able to listen in on her if they were trying, but it might keep them from overhearing if they weren't. For a moment, Buttercup stared into the basin, watching the water swirl and disappear into the drain. She tried not to think about Butch. But somehow, all her exhausted brain kept snapping back to was the sight of him spreading his palms out and looking at her, like a grudging kid who knew the jig was up. As if to say, 'W_ell, what do you want from me?'_ and his barking laugh in her face.

'_Don't ask me how I ever got to feel this way about a twisted bitch like you_.'

Buttercup's stomach tightened. For a moment, she forgot completely where she was and what she was doing. There was only that bitter smile on Butch's face. It made her want to scream.

But she was pretty sure the running tap wouldn't be enough to mask that. So instead, she dipped her hands into the stream and washed the blood off her face. She cleansed the gashes and wiped at the bruises, some of them already faded from deep plum to pale yellow. She chased the paths of wounds from her face to her neck, shoulders and arms, and then to her abdomen, hissing softly as she scrubbed at the ones that were still painful. She tried to be quiet enough for the running tap to hide her small noises of pain. Every time she touched a wound, she tried to remember how she'd gotten it. She failed for more than half of them.

Buttercup pulled off her sports bra. She pooled water in her palms and ran it over the crown of her head, working her fingers through a blood-matted patch, though who the blood belonged to she wasn't entirely sure. She slid out of her soccer shorts and ran water over her thighs and calves, until all the blood and grit was rubbed off her skin and pooled around her ankles. The floor was stained a grimy red, but Buttercup's body was clean.

She checked herself once over in the mirror, then turned off the tap and stepped into the tub. Buttercup lowered herself slowly, bracing with her hands on either side of the tub. She embraced the sting of the hot water on her injuries, even as the mouths of her cuts puckered like kiss-swollen lips in the heat. She groaned softly, leaning back as her muscles bunched, holding onto the pain before finally uncurling and releasing it away onto the suds.

She leant her head against the curve of the tub, staring at the ceiling from the other side of a steamy veil. That was a mistake. As soon as her mind wasn't occupied by the stinging wounds, it went straight back to Butch.

Her neutral stare folded itself into a glower. Her emotional numbness melted away into anger. Anger at Butch, the last person she would have expected to pull shit like this on her. Angry at herself, for calling him out (hadn't she decided to just keep the impossible possibility to herself? Hadn't it been enough to be awkward from afar but at least safe?) And there was other anger too. She was angry at Mitch, for leaving her with a different set of wounds, the kind she wasn't used to, the types that chemical-X didn't heal. Angry at Blossom for sitting downstairs with her perfect lectures and perfect speeches, her perfect life. But mostly she was angry at Butch. And at herself.

"Fuck you," she said. And though her voice was soft, it was surprisingly loud in the emptiness of the bathroom.

After about fifteen minutes in the bath, there was a knock on the door. Buttercup could tell from the crisp staccato who was on the other side.

"I'm in the bath," she said loudly, thinking about the turned lock.

After a moment, the door groaned, buckled, and snapped open. Blossom's hand appeared, holding out a fluffy white towel. Blossom herself followed, looking pointedly away so as not to catch sight of Buttercup's naked body.

Buttercup stared. Some part of her thought about standing up just to make Miss Perfect feel even more uncomfortable than she obviously was. "I'm not done," she said flatly.

To her mild surprise, Blossom nodded, then dropped the towel into the still filled tub. "There. Cover up… can I talk to you?"

Buttercup blinked as the wet terry cloth settled lightly around her like a timid sea creature, hugging at her curves, ballooning over her abdomen. After a moment, she tucked the material under her hips, bending her knees out of the water, wet towel clung to her kneecaps. She wrapped the other under over her chest and under her arms. Then she leant back and waited.

At the sound of soft water noises stilling, Blossom sent a furtive glance behind her. Seeing Buttercup fully covered, she turned around and took in her sister's appearance. Buttercup's choppy black hair was mussed, a single strand stuck on the corner of her mouth, which was bruised - a tress of black kissing a yellow-purple crescent on the corner of Buttercup's lips. Her vivid green eyes were tired, sullen.

Buttercup waited grudgingly for the lecture to begin. But Blossom sister just stood there, looking at her. "Are you okay?" Blossom finally asked.

Was that faint slapping noise the sound of Buttercup's jaw hitting the water? "Uh, yeah?"

Blossom nodded, then looked around the as if she were taking inventory of the bathroom supplies, making sure everything was in order. Buttercup sat in the bath, wrapped in a towel, bemused as Blossom looked for something else to say.

After a few seconds, the pink Puff sat herself on the sink counter, noticing but choosing not to comment on (the very notion of that Blossom was capable of not commenting on _anything_ was still blowing Buttercup's mind) the puddle of silt and blood on the floor. Instead Blossom crossed her ankles and continued to look at Buttercup with that strange expression.

"Well, I'm glad," Blossom said finally, sounding forced. "That you're okay."

"…That's it?" Buttercup asked.

"What's it?"

"No lecture? No anti-violence bullshit rant?"

"_Buttercup_," Blossom said, irritated at her sister's vulgarity. Then she re-settled herself on the counter and smoothed her hair – a nervous habit they all carried in one way or another (Blossom smoothed, Bubbles twirled, Buttercup fisted). "For your information, I'm not always… lecturing." Blossom sniffed.

Buttercup snorted.

"I just wanted to make sure you were alright. You looked upset when you got home."

Buttercup shrugged off Blossom's concern, still peering expectantly at her.

"Oh, alright!" Blossom huffed, throwing her hands up. "Bubbles."

"Bubbles?" Buttercup blinked.

"Bubbles," Blossom confirmed, rather put out.

"Me!" Bubbles declared brightly, poking her head in through the opened broken door.

"Alright, what is this? A freaking public phone booth?"

"_Buttercup_."

"I'm just sayin' – I'm taking a bath for crying out loud. I'm _naked_."

Bubbles smiled at her, as if to say, '_You're worried about that? How cute.'_ Blossom, on the other hand, blushed hard enough to match her hair.

Bubbles made me promise not to give you any guidance," Blossom mumbled.

"Lecture me," Buttercup corrected.

Blossom sniffed again.

"What you got a cold?" Buttercup teased.

"I'm just expressing my concern," Blossom said.

"We're worried about you," Bubbles repeated, sitting on the toilet seat.

"Yeah, well, don't." Buttercup said, suddenly uncomfortable. "I'm fine."

"And a poor liar," Blossom said.

"Just tell us, we're sisters."

Buttercup looked back and forth between those wide, inquisitive eyes. Well wasn't like they'd left her much of a choice, cornering her in the bathtub. She turned her gaze down to the water. The last of the suds were clearing away. Buttercup sunk a bit lower, bringing her hands together, thumb over thumb. She pumped squeezed her palms together, pumping a spurt of water out, like a fake heart.

"Today. I, um. Butch is…" she frowned more deeply. This was difficult to say.

"A chauvinistic cur?" Blossom offered.

"Muscly?" Bubbles chirped. "Tall?"

Buttercup squeezed the heart again, sending a green spurt of water up into the air. "He's… into me." She couldn't say 'in love'. She would just about die. "Like he likes me. Oh god."

"Oh!" Bubbles clapped her hands together, blue eyes lighting up like a kid that had just caught sight of the ice cream truck. Or Rudolf.

On the counter, Blossom went pale, looking a bit like she was about to be sick. "E-Excuse me?"

"You heard me," Buttercup said. "Don't make me say it again."

"But I – _how_? That's impossible! I mean, no, I don't mean it's impossible to be, uh, into you but.. I mean... it's _Butch_."

"I think it's sweet," Bubbles smiled.

Buttercup didn't know which one she wanted to kill more. She squeezed the heart again, a bit more viscously, water slapping and ripples dancing around her kneecaps.

"Okay, okay. Alright, let's think about this rationally and calmly," Blossom said, visibly collecting herself, trying to get a handle on the situation. "Maybe it's all a misunderstanding. Or a joke. Yeah. That has to be it. It's Butch we're talking about. This probably just some childish prank he's pulling. He's not serious. It's got to be joke."

"Do you not see this fucking bruise on my face?" Buttercup deadpanned. "Does this look like he was joking to you?"

"I wonder. Does he just want to have sex with you?" Bubbles asked thoughtfully.

"_Bubbles_!" Blossom screeched.

"Or like, marry you."

"BUBBLES!" It was Buttercup's turn to screech now.

"What?" Bubbles frowned. "It's important to ask these kinds of things when you get a boy's confession. There are different kinds of crushes, you know."

"Yeah, well," Buttercup said, looking down. "We didn't really get to the talking part. We just sort of… hit each other."

Blossom cleared her throat. "Alright. This is what we're going to do. Buttercup."

Buttercup turned involuntarily to the sound of Blossom's Leader-voice.

"You don't love him, right? So, the next time you see him-"

"Hopefully never," Buttercup grumbled.

"Don't be foolish – you go to the same school. The next time you see him, just pull him aside and let him know that while you uh, respect him as a friend, you don't return his feelings romantically. And the mature thing to do would be to just talk things out and agree to be friends."

From the toilet seat, Bubbles made a troubled, skeptical face.

Buttercup snorted, "Yeah, that'll go over great. Have you _met_ Butch?"

"It will work," Blossom insisted, nodding vigorously. "If he really cares about you, he'll want to respect your feelings. Just have a good conversation with him and let him down easily. Firmly, but easily. Alright?"

Buttercup stared down at the water, squeezing the heart again and again, the water slapping softly. Around her, the bath had had gone tepid, matching her body temperature. If it weren't for the soft sting of her healing wounds, she could close her eyes and wouldn't have known she was in the tub at all.

Instead, Buttercup stared at her hands and the fading purple around her knuckles. "Alright, fine," she said. "I'll try it."

She squeezed the heart again.


	3. See you (Or Youth and Inexperience 3)

_We broke up before we even began. _

* * *

"Hey. Can I talk to you for a sec? … _Butch_?"

It's not until then he realizes that he hasn't been moving. That he's been sitting frozen, mid-conversation with the guys since he heard her voice behind him, waiting for the sword to fall or the shit to hit.

His tablemates snicker. Because he looks like a fucking idiot.

Butch turns around and gives her a sneering grin. "Sure thing, Buttercup." He manages to make it sound suggestive and asinine, even when his heart is like a freaking steel drum in a closet.

The snickering grows louder, now aimed at Buttercup. The green puff's hands clench on the straps of her backpack. But she doesn't hit him.

Butch stares at that one, little motion. He tries not to vomit.

She doesn't hit him.

She doesn't fucking hit him.

_Fuck_.

His chair scrapes obnoxiously on the cafeteria floor as he stands, leaving his hoodie and his bag stuffed under the seat. He doesn't really give a fuck what happens to either. "Where'd you have in mind?" He asks, leaning suggestively over her smaller frame, aware of the guys' eyes still watching them. "Janitor's closet? Empty classroom?" He has to bend down to crowd her – he's always had a whole head, shoulders and pecs over the top of her head – and as he does so he catches a whiff of her soap.

A chorus of adolescent '_Ooooh'_s chime from behind him. But Buttercup's face just stays stony and unchanging. She barely reacts.

"Let's go outside," she says, turning on her heel, knuckles still white on the straps of her backpack.

Butch smirks out of habit and follows her outside. They walk past the parking lot, onto the grass and past the playground, toward the soccer field. Buttercup walks in front, keeping her back to him – deliberately, he suspects – and he lets her. His act from the cafeteria slips just a little. Just for a moment.

He watches the way she walks in front of him, stiffly. Her normal slouchy posture is rigid as a slab of rock today, her shoulders stuck halfway to her ears.

If Butch had been able to look at his own face, he would have been startled to find the resentment so readily visible in his eyes. The somber anger. The dread.

When they reach the field, Buttercup stops at the speedometer and turns around abruptly. Had he been anything less than three paces behind her, they would have collided.

"Mitch got X-ray results yesterday, by the way." she said. "Fractured tailbone, if you care."

Butch shrugged, trying on a tired smirk. "Nah."

He watched the little flicker of anger fly behind her eyes, quicker than a flash of summer lightening.

"You rammed that ball up his ass on purpose."

Butch replies by executing the porno-riff. And Buttercup's eyes harden but, again, she doesn't hit him.

And Butch is getting desperate. "If you're so worried about Mitch, why don't you fly yourself on over to wherever the fuck he's licking himself."

"I didn't come to talk about Mitch."

"Really?" Butch drawls.

"It's not about fucking Mitch," Buttercup snaps. "I wanted to talk about you… and me."

Fuck. This was it. She was actually doing this.

The insides of Butch's stomach start slithering over each other. And it's not like how it feels before a fight, when he can barely contain himself from the tantalizing promise of leaping in and crunching skulls. This is different. And it sucks.

"Look," Buttercup lets go of a strap and fists her hand in her hair. "I'm… sorry about how I reacted the other day."

_No, _Butch thought viciously. _Don't do that. Don't fucking apologize._

"I was really… stupid. It's just," Buttercup stares hard at the ground, as if she's about to tear a burning crater into the grass between their feet with her eye beams. "My last breakup really sucked."

Butch doesn't know what to say to that, so he doesn't say anything at all. For someone who claimed to not want to talk about Mitch, she certainly seemed to be bringing him up every fucking other sentence.

"It sucked because it was a breakup," Buttercup continues, looking red enough to die. "But it also sucked because Mitch was my friend before. Like, one of my best friends. And then dating and breaking up – that really fucked us up. You know like, it didn't just ruin our relationship. It ruined everything."

"You seem to get along just fine to me," Butch mutters.

"We don't," Buttercup looks up, blinking. Her sudden, matter-of-fact tone takes him aback. "It's fucking awkward as hell. And I'm trying really hard every day to keep us from hating each other, or just never speaking again. That could happen. Like, that could happen so fucking easily. And I hate it – I hate the idea of that. I'm not…" she pauses to take a breath, steeling herself. "I'm not like Bubbles. Or even like Blossom. Not everyone likes me. I only have a few people in the world who aren't scared of me, and even fewer who I actually like. And I hate losing them." Here she looks up to meet Butch's eyes. And as he stares back at her, it is all he can do to keep his expression flat. "So I guess, because of that, when I found out about that thing last week I sort of freaked out. Because I don't…" she fists her hand in her bob again, exhaling sharply. "I don't want us to get messed up too. I really… I just want us to keep being friends."

Maybe it was because he'd grown up with Boomer and Brick, but it takes Butch a whole minute to realize that the person across from him was asking him for something. Practically begging for it.

Buttercup was asking him to not be in love with her. She was pleading with him to take back everything from last week. To stop feeling the way he felt. To _not_-be in love with her. And part of Butch, a very small part, thought that maybe she was right. Because Buttercup was violent and impulsive and sharp as a knife, and he wouldn't know what to do if he actually got her.

But that was only a small voice, somewhere in the corners of his neglected heart. The other part of him, the biggest part that he knew so well and that took up most of his space, saw her looking at him with those tense, guarded eyes, that desperation as she asked him not to feel something that he did – that he couldn'tpossibly_ not_. And it pissed him off.

Butch leant back and put his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants, clenching his fists inside, letting the autumn breeze toy with his sleeves. "You seriously doing this?"

Buttercup blinks up at him. "Doing what?"

"Having _a talk_?" His tone was practically jeering now.

Buttercup scowls. "You got something wrong with that?"

"Yeah, there's something fucking wrong with that. It's fucking retarded, pansy shit. Hit me. Kick me. Fucking _bite_ me. At least then I'll be able to respond."

"We talked last week," Buttercup points out, "before we started hitting each other." And Butch can already see her withdrawing from him. Whatever she'd been saying to him before, at least she'd been being open, honest – showing him into her heart. Now she was frantically locking doors and battening hatchets, before Hurricane Butch blew through and made her regret ever being honest with him.

"Yeah, and that turned out fucking great, didn't it?" Butch snarks, getting angry now. "_Fuck_,Buttercup."

"Don't '_fuck, Buttercup_' me," Buttercup snaps. "If you didn't want to talk, then you shouldn't have told me you liked me in the first place."

"You confronted me!Need a reminder there, Princess?"

"Yeah because you drove a soccer ball up my friend's ass! What was I supposed to do, just pretend nothing happened?"

"Isn't that what you're asking me to do? To just pretend like I don't feel the way I do? Like nothing ever happened?"

"Yeah, you know what? I am. Because that's the only way we get to still be friends. Don't you get that?"

"Well, maybe I don't want to be your friend, Buttercup." Butch growls, venomous. "Maybe that just isn't in the fucking cards." And that tiny, corner-piece of his heart is screaming bloody murder at him. Because Buttercup is his best friend - the only friend he's ever had.

"Ugh! Why are you _doing_ this? It was all fine until you had to go and ruin everything!"

"Maybe I did. I can't help it Buttercup. It's what I fucking _do_."

She nearly hit him then. He saw the flash of it and braced, his whole body practically thrumming for it. But at the last moment, she restrains herself. She backs down.

And this is how he knows he's losing her.

Buttercup isn't talks. Buttercup is punching and grinning and laughing and bleeding together, alive. And if they weren't communicating with their fists, then everything was all fucked up and wrong. They wouldn't getting anywhere like this. They couldn't. Butch knew that. He just couldn't figure out how to get her back to where they belonged. And as he stared at her, her big green eyes burning with anger and her hair as black as the bruises she'd left on his skin, he realizes its because it was already ruined. They, _this_ – whatever the fuck they were – was already ruined. He'd broken it. They were done.

"What are you fucking smiling about?" Buttercup snaps. And Butch catches the slight wavering in her voice. Acting tough as nails even when she was about to cry. That was Buttercup.

"Fucking ridiculous."

"What?"

"I said: _Fucking. Ridiculous_." Butch repeats slowly and loudly, staring right into her face. Inside, he wants to rip this whole field up from the mud and incinerate it until there's no more heat left and his head aches with emptiness. "I hope you're happy. This is what happens when people like us talk."

Buttercup throws her backpack onto the ground. "Don't say 'us' like that, Butch! I'm _trying_ to fix this."

"Bullshit!" Butch screams, and the sudden rage surprises them both. "What did you expect, Buttercup? You thought you'd take me out to the soccer field and let me down easy? We'd talk about our feelings and then I'd agree to pretend like I'm not what I am at the end of it? Because it's not about whether or not you feel the same way about me, I just want _you_ to be happy?" Butch croons, mockingly. "You thought I was going to say some BS like that? Did you forget who I am? That's fucking Boomer, not me. I'm selfish and rotten and when I want something, I'd rather destroy it than let anyone else even _look_ at it. But I can't do that with you, now can I? So fine – here's what we're going to do. After today, I never want to see you again. I don't want to hear your voice or your name. And I sure as fuck don't want to be your friend. I'm not going to follow you around like Mitch. It'll be like I never fucking knew you. Like I never saw you. And one day, when I'm out of this shit school and this shit town, I'll have just forgotten who you were. And then we can leave it like that. _Then _we'll be okay. You got that, Buttercup?"

She was staring at him like he was the most petulant thing in the world, and he hated it. But he also gained some sick satisfaction in shooting her down. In making her feel pain of rejection after she'd rejected him. Buttercup's eyes are cold and hard and green now – the fire behind her anger is gone. Her jaw is a tight line that looked about ready to snap. "You're such a fucking child," she says after a moment.

He crushes his mouth on hers. Instinctively, Buttercup steps back and raises her hands to put between them. Butch leans forward onto her and traps her wrists in his hands. Her mouth is cool and small beneath his. And their first kiss is cruel, and painful and final, and absolutely everything that shouldn't be in a goodbye to your best friend.

"See you, Buttercup," he says roughly. And then, in a blinding flash of viridian, he's gone. And Buttercup is standing alone in a field.


	4. Extra Pickles

**A/N: **Completely separate one-shot from "Youth and Immaturity".

Also, titling - lawl.

Also, your reviews are so amazing and supportive. They're better than like, coffee.

* * *

The first time Buttercup killed someone, Blossom stopped time. Well, stopped may have been overstating it. One moment, _Him_'s twisted, infant clone had morphed its arm into a cruel, arcing blade and was swinging it downward over Bubbles' head, and the next – time was inching along, a tenth of a frame a moment.

Buttercup hadn't even realized she was moving until she was literally inching forward through space, watching the warped events unfold around her. In the palm of her drawn-back hand, a green crackle of power was breathing to life. And Buttercup realizes then that she's already made all the tough decisions.

_'Buttercup_,' Blossom's voice flows through her head like water. '_Buttercup, you __can't__.'_

_'I can.' _Buttercup thinks. The angle of her elbow continues to close, like a tightening spring. Her fist draws a line with _It_'s temple (and she's thinking in '_It's' _now, but she doesn't know if that is something she'd been doing all along, or if she only just started when she realized what this was all coming to – what she'd have to do).

'_Buttercup, __think__!_' Blossom pleads. '_This is a line we never cross and you're crossing it. It'll hurt you. It'll change everything. Or, it should.'_

Buttercup's jaw tightens. '_Then,_' she shoots back viciously, '_can __you__ do it?_'

Blossom's voice goes silent as a morgue.

The power in Buttercup's palm surges in reply.

'_I know what I'm doing,'_ Buttercup thinks, still hard and cutting as diamond. '_I know what this means. And I'm doing it because I'm the only one who can. So you don't have to._'

'_So I-?" _

'_Just who do you think,'_ Buttercup's fist shoots forward, fingers forming a pointed apex, '_I'm doing this for_?'

Not for Townsville. Not even for humanity. Those reasons were Blossom's reasons, and they were a lot harder. Complicated. Throwing all sorts of moral shades and grays. Buttercup's reasons were simpler, she knew. Easier.

In the last moment, He turns and looks at her. Red, bloodshot eyes lock onto hers, showing a knowledge that lacked fear. Buttercup's hand goes through the eye socket, rupturing and destroying everything its path.

And Blossom doesn't, or can't, speed time up again.

Maybe Blossom wanted Buttercup to live with this moment. Maybe Blossom was punishing herself.

'_I'm saving you,_' Buttercup thinks as her hand enters and blasts through the brain. '_From having to do __this__.'_

Her hand clears the back of the skull and the clone slumps its entire weight onto her arm. Unmoving, its one intact eye is still gazing, still locked onto hers.

She wishes Blossom would fucking speed time up again, because her body feels thick and unresponsive and she hates it. It isn't until Bubbles floats up from underneath and places a hand on her tense shoulder, that Buttercup realizes Blossom already has.

Buttercup lowers her arm and the thing – the _body_, falls from her like weight shed. And yet, as it falls a different, immeasurable burden settles on her shoulders.

She doesn't look at Blossom. She knows her sister is crying. And if she sees the tears, she doesn't know that she'll physically be able to handle the resentment budding in her heart. Besides, she doesn't want to face the distance in her sisters' eyes. Their judgment. At her side, her bloody hand curls into a fist.

"Buttercup-"

"No!" Buttercup snaps, recoiling. The harshness of her voice startles even her. "Not yet."

And before they do anything, she takes off. They don't stop her, call her name, or come after her.

And she isn't sure how she feels about that.

**[X]**

It takes her until she's practically there for her to realize where she's going, and a distant part of her mind raises a surprised flag. Why here of all places? She hadn't even been back since…

Buttercup shakes the thoughts out of her head, trying to clear way the fragments, the floating haze. It all feels like a lifetime ago. Everything does. She lets her body continue leading her to the peak of the un-named volcano, stopping only when she was hovering over it, gazing down into the red core that would have seared the vision out of any normal human's brain. She bakes in heat that would have peeled the skin of any non-Chemical X body. She let the heat play cat and mouse with her nervous system, permitting the pain to grow until all her bodily instincts begged her to run, fly, salvage herself. She let it get to that point, and then forced herself to go deeper, embracing the pain.

She stays for what must have been hours, gazing into the hypnotic ocean of lava and light. She lets time turn into a huge, immeasurable thing against which she feels like a speck of irrelevant existence, of a faint pulsing of pain against the backdrop of infinity.

Night comes and goes and comes again.

And then, when it felt like solitude would open up and swallow her whole, a hand claps rudely over her eyes.

"Guess who?"

Buttercup's body reacts even if her brain doesn't, at first. Her elbow drives back, hard. Meanwhile, her thoughts skip surprise and fear and jump straight to recognition. Even as Buttercup swivels around to swing a vicious punch to her would-be-assailant's head, she's already recognized him by the texture of calluses on his thumb against her temple.

Butch catches her fist without any serious effort – which in and of itself tells her how out of it she must be. He tosses her blow to the side like an empty beer can to a curb. "Sloppy," he says.

Buttercup looks at him, light-headed and a bit nauseous. "Butch."

He raises those cruel eyebrows at her – as if asking if she needs verification on that.

Buttercup struggles to pull herself together, but her brain runs like a wobbly record. Rowdy Ruff Boy. Here. Enemy. Split lips. Swollen eyes and fingers. Burning breaths. The scar around his left eye. The cruel crookedness of sneering smiles. Butch.

"What are you doing here?" She settles on that, because it seems reasonable.

Butch wipes a line of sweat from his forehead, and she realizes absently that she'd drenched and dried out long ago – salty flakes and crystals are dusted all over her skin. Butch shrugs. "Well, call it a hunch. After searching every other possible crevice of the planet, I figured maybe you were here."

Buttercup frowned. Butch – looking for her?

The pieces click together slowly. One at a time. The first real emotion Buttercup feels again is annoyance. "Did my sister send you?"

"Well, yeah."

Buttercup laughs. It is not kind. Nor does it really sound healthy. Her vocal chords are dried out and underused. They scrape together like an old man on an oxygen tank.

"So she can't even leave me alone for a minute. Typical Blossom. Always sticking her perfect little nose into everything."

Butch frowns at her. It's the first fault line in his no-fucks-given act. "I mean… you've been gone for almost three weeks."

That takes a while to sink in. Her first thought is that Butch is a liar, or he's confused. Maybe both. It wouldn't be the first time.

"Your sisters are royally losing their shit. I think Blossom and Brick are searching Pluto right now."

Buttercup tries to remember the number of nights that had passed. But it's hard to pull apart in her brain. Memories stick together like molasses, and if she tries to sift too much, the things she's been burying in heat and pain start poking their ugly heads up from to the surface… Buttercup shuts her brain off. Butch must see the blank expression fall across her eyes, because he takes the opportunity to slap her, lightly, on the face.

She thinks his palm lingers just a bit longer than it needs to – but maybe that's just her imagination.

"Slow," Butch says, a bit softly. "You really got fucked up, huh?"

"Wow, fuck you too." Buttercup starts to pull away, deeper into the volcano's heart. Or she would have, but Butch catches her wrist and holds it. She really has gotten slow. Her skin is red and raw and sensitive from days of nothing but slow burn, and Butch's grip is like acid.

"Come on," he says. "Get out of this fucking shithole."

Butch draws her up to the lip of the volcano, but no further than that. Buttercup lets him without putting up too much of a fight. She knows it should be awkward and painful for them to see each other like this – here of all places. But instead, it just feels like falling into exactly what they'd had in the past, whatever you wanted to call it – relationship, benefits… _thing_. This was a place where she and Butch had been close. And somehow, through the thick dead feeling cloaking her mind, it feels natural to be here with him again.

"You ever think that like volcanoes are just the massive zits of Earth?" Butch asks after some silence (he'd never done well with it), throwing a rock into the red sea below. "Like, if you were to zoom out, and think of Earth's surface as some dude's skin, volcanoes would be just huge fucking zits getting ready to explode."

"Dude, that's gross."

Butch offers her his reckless grin. Buttercup is still confused as to why he's here. And, now that he's found her, why he hasn't left to report back to their siblings. Missing for three weeks.

"So, Blossom asked you to help find me?" Buttercup says slowly, trying to make sure she has it right.

"Not me, directly." Butch says, poking around for another rock to sacrifice to the volcano god. "I'm pretty sure Pinky has never so much as made eye contact with me, directly."

"Who blames her," Buttercup says without thinking, falling to the motions of the way they used to talk.

Butch gives her the finger, still looking for rocks. "She asked Brick for help."

_Oh_, Buttercup thinks. Now it made a kind of sense at least. "So Brick ordered you."

Butch hurls a stone into the lava, watching as the red swallows it whole. He shrugs. "Leader man says."

"Well you can tell both our leaders that you found me. And I'm fine. And to stop freaking out."

"Why don't you tell them yourself?"

Buttercup blinks. The thought of her going back – or ever seeing her sisters again hadn't come to her. It simply hadn't been in the cards. The idea of it sounded normal out loud, but somehow felt foreign to think about. She wanted to reject it.

Butch hit her again, on the other cheek. The blow was light, but still hard enough to plant a little, pink sting in her raw skin.

"The _fuck_, Butch," she snaps, touching at it with her fingertips.

He smirks. She thinks she sees a glimmer of something like relief behind it. Another hallucination, maybe.

"Go home, loser." Butch says, and there's no joke in his voice.

She wishes there was. Butch's seriousness is uncommon, and gives her no avenue for escape. And if going home after what she'd done was the next step, then –

"I can't."

Butch rolls his dark, green eyes.

Normally, she'd want to punch him in the face. This time, she only wants to sink back into the red solitude she'd immersed herself inside for so long.

"That's the tard-est thing I've ever heard. And I've said some pretty fucking dumb shit."

Buttercup sits hard on the ground, suddenly. She crushes her head between her knees and wraps her elbows around her shins. She wishes she was alone. "Go away, Butch." She sounds smaller than she's ever sounded in her life.

Beside her, Butch is very still. He doesn't move at all.

"I said, just fucking leave. _Please_." She wishes she hadn't said it as soon as she does. Please never got anyone anywhere with Butch.

After a long stretch of silence, he sits down next to her. Close enough to feel his nearness. He throws rocks into the volcano. He shuffles. But after what feels like forever, he's still sitting there, waiting.

**[X]**

"Did they tell you?" She asks finally, her voice creating an echo between her knees.

She thinks he won't answer at first. Then he says, plainly, "Tell me what?"

Buttercup snaps upright, wild. "Don't fuck with me! Either they told you, or they didn't. And if they did, don't fucking _make me say it_!"

Butch scowls at her. "All Pinky said was that you'd been gone for almost three weeks, and she was freaking. That's it. She was too hysterical to get anything else across, actually."

Buttercup doesn't believe him. She doesn't _fucking _believe him. Butch is a liar. He always has been. And she – she –

"Buttercup," Butch says, thumping his fist softly down on the top of her head – the way he always used to do back then, and hadn't done since. The gesture calmed some frantic, animal part of her that she hadn't even realized had been taking control. "Dude, what the fuck happened?"

She stares into his eyes, and the words just won't come. They fill her and they fucking terrify her. And it turns out it's okay, because somehow Butch seems to do what she'd never thought he would have been capable of doing _ever_ - he puts it together without so much as a single spoken word.

"Oh," he says. "Uh, was it your first time?"

And just like that, it's all undone. Buttercup doesn't know how he fucking understands. But he does. And now she's here with Butch.

"Of course," she says. "I didn't… I didn't even think twice."

Butch doesn't seem disgusted. He doesn't even seem surprised.

_Why would he be? _Buttercup asks herself sardonically. _He's probably done it before_.

(And it strikes her as ironic that she's been here before, under very different circumstances, in considerably less clothing, and thinking the same exact thing about Butch but for something entirely different. But it's only a fleeting thought. She barley realizes she's had it before it's gone.)

"Of course you didn't. You wouldn't have done it if you'd needed to."

Buttercup tames back her instinct to recoil from him. Does he sound almost… proud of her? The idea of that disgusts her and makes her feel thin.

"So you killed a bad guy," Butch says, all casual. A verbal band-aid that doesn't do a thing to help her gaping wound.

"Don't just say it like that. It's different for you, you're a Rowdy Ruff Boy. You wouldn't understand. For you it's probably like brownie points."

"What's your point?"

"My point is that I don't fucking want to see you right now. So leave."

"Well you sure as fuck don't want to see your sisters. So until then, you're stuck with me."

"What, so now you _want_ to be my babysitter?"

"You'd rather I went home and told them where you are? Because they're gonna ask if I go back. And then it's going to be them sitting here instead of me."

"You could just not be a dick and tell them to leave me alone."

"Hi, have you met me? My name is Butch – AKA, the biggest dick you've ever met." He throws in a lewd wink for good measure. Some habits never die.

She might have sniggered at that once. Today, she wants to scream at him until his ears bled. Or hers do. She wants to hit him. She wants to beat the fucking shit out of him. But she doesn't. She can't quite get traction on the sentiment. She feels weak and watery still. Something in her is broken. And Butch can see it.

"You have two choices," he says after a moment, the nastiness gone from his voice. "Go home or entertain me."

"I'm not up for a fight, Butch."

"Who said fight? I just want you to tell me a story."

"What story," she sighs.

"Tell me what happened three weeks ago."

Buttercup goes dead silent and stares soberly at the black, scorched earth beneath them. "I told you already," she said. "I killed something." The words felt foreign and heavy in her mouth. But somehow, the fact that they'd already been said by Butch made them easier – smoother. "I killed _Him_."

That gets Butch's attention. Before this moment, she hasn't been completely sure if he wasn't just waiting to get this chore done with before he buzzed off to do whatever (or _whoever_) he'd really wanted to be doing this evening.

"Not _Him__, Him_. A part of him. A spawn _He_ made. But it was still a separate creature. It had a heart. It had a brain. I shoved my hand through it." (She sees that he's impressed and she deliberately ignores it).

"Why'd you take the shot?" Butch asks. "Did Pinky, I mean, did Blossom…?"

"No," Buttercup says. "No, she didn't. She couldn't."

Buttercup's gaze goes from her thighs to the milky blue twilight above them. Another night moving in to take over the sky. Butch's profile is rimmed-red by the volcano's glow and sits like an anchor in her periphery. He is a strange, burning contrast in her field of vision.

It occurs to her that he's the only one here with her. He's the only one listening. And she can tell by his uncharacteristic silence that he isn't going anywhere. And Buttercup finds that – as long as he doesn't try to take her home – she doesn't really mind all that much. It is impossible to disgust Butch. To surprise Butch. Piss him off? Yes. Hurt him? Judging by the number of loose twats he'd burned through after they told each other it was over, she suspected yes. But she would never see what she'd pictured in Blossom's eyes in Butch's. And the knowledge of that was somehow like the first step on solid ground after being lost at sea for years.

"Have you ever done anything for Brick when he didn't order you to do it?"

"I ordered him a stripper for our last birthday."

"No, not like that. I mean –" Buttercup sighs in frustration, fingers clenching and dragging patterns into the black, ashy earth. "Have you ever done something that he didn't order you to – like when it _mattered_, when he didn't – or when he ordered you _not _to?"

Butch was looking at her, she could feel it – could see it in her periphery as she kept her gaze on the nascent stars – faint smatterings of light that were beginning to be unearthed by the dark.

"No," he says.

"Right." Buttercup smiles, bitter. "Because we're the muscle, the fists. They call the shots and we follow through. We don't make our own calls. We might fly off the handle sometimes, every once and a while. But for the most part, we just hit what they tell us to hit, get our kicks off that and go home bloody."

"You resent her for that?" Butch asks. She can hear him connecting some dots, thinking he understands what this is about now. (And he does, in part – because in this way, Buttercup and Butch are the same, but that isn't why she's here now. That isn't why she can't bear to think of Blossom's face, or going home again).

"Yeah, but it's easier for us to be like that. It's better. I… I killed _Him_ for her, even though she told me not to. Because I knew she was wrong. It had to be done. Blossom knew it. I knew it. And if it wasn't me, it would have to be her. She would have had to do it because she's the leader and she's responsible for us, but it would have completely broken her. She's too good to ever… you know. I knew it. So I did it instead."

Butch is still looking at her, but differently now. She is in a place that he doesn't understand. "It' won't break you," he says. "You're stronger than Blossom."

"You mean I'm darker," Buttercup corrects. "I'm not strong. If I was, I'd have gone home already. But I don't. I can't. I don't want to see her face."

"I thought you said you did it for her." Butch sounds confused now, a bit frustrated.

Buttercup doesn't really blame him.

"I did. I'd do it again. But at the same time, I resent her. I'm angry at her."

"Because you had to do it for her?"

"A little," Buttercup admits. "But mostly because… I know she'll look at me differently for it. I killed someone. I'm… a murderer – even if it's for the good guy's side. I killed and it disgusts her. _Her_. She was the one I was trying to protect. And she'll still hate me. I… I'll lose her. And I hate her for that. It's not fucking fair."

Butch is silent for what feels like forever. And she's mostly grateful for it. She doesn't remember the last time she was this honest – with anyone. She'd taken the deepest inside part of her and exposed it, even though it felt raw and delicate. It was also true, like the tiniest, most fragile bones.

Above them, the stars shone dry and white. _Maybe I should have gone there_, she thinks. She doubted they could have ever found her. _But you wouldn't have_, something says to her, a tiny voice somewhere underneath all the desires to flee. _You knew, you __hoped__ that this would – _

Butch bumps a fist to her shoulder, a replica of his left hook – the one that had knocked her out once. The one she'd warned her sisters to never get caught behind. She'd sworn that once it had partially dislodged her brainstem, forcing Chemical-X into overdrive to repair the trauma. Except this time there's no force behind it. This time Butch connects with her shoulder and stays there – definitely longer than he should have. But Buttercup doesn't shake it off, even when the fist opens and Butch's palm spreads over her skin. His hands are rough and calloused, exactly as she remembered them to be. He hasn't changed at fucking all, she thinks.

"Why did you come here?" He asks after a moment, his hand tightening slightly on her, as if to keep her from flying away.

Buttercup shrugs under his hold, and answers him honestly. "I don't know. Maybe because I could always tell the truth here."

And that's an awkward as shit reminder to bring up at this stage. What they'd done here. What they'd said here. But Buttercup is too beyond teenage relationships to care about it right now. Honesty had always been something their relationship had in bounds – too much even, she thought sometimes.

"Maybe because you and Brick are the same as me and Blossom."

Buck exhales sharply, and it passes as a kind of laugh without humor. "Brick is twice the dick that Pinky will ever be," he says. "And I think you're a much more fuckin' complicated sister than I am a brother."

Buttercup smiles, glancing at his red outline. She's not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that she can't make out the details of his features or his expression, he is just a collection of hard red outlines: straight nose, curved cheek, and spiked hair. The shiny red crescent scar over his eye.

"Hey," Butch says roughly – the way he used to speak whenever he was being serious. His hand moves up her shoulder to her neck and comes to rest around its nape, fingers moving beneath her hairline. With his other hand, Butch reaches out and smears his knuckles along her face. She feels the wetness on her cheek – it takes her until then to realize that at some point, she started crying.

And she thinks Butch might kiss her.

She's never cried in front of him before. Not even when he'd ended them and left, saying bullshit things to her like 'T_hink you're just too fucking good for this_' and 'W_e will never get this to fucking work_' and she'd said lies to him like '_Fine_'.

Somehow, it's only when it doesn't matter anymore that she's let him see her tears.

Butch pulls her forward. And his lips on hers are softer than she's ever remembered them to be. Unlike every other kiss she'd gotten from Butch, this one is completely calm – void of any violence or games or hurt or sexuality. There was only Butch on the other end of it – assuring, accepting. If it weren't for all the history that stood behind it, she would have almost called it platonic. When he breaks it, she feels calmer. Tired. Like he's taken something from her, to carry.

They sit in the silence and in the heat. Then, Butch stands. She thinks maybe he'll finally leave her alone. "Maybe it's all switched around in your head," he says.

"What?"

"I mean, maybe it's not that Pinky's image of you is lowered. Your image of her is too high. She's not as fucking pristine as you think. She's got the hots for _Brick_ for crying out loud. I'd say that tight-up Princess can handle loving more than a little bit of dark, no matter what she'd like us to think. Besides," he adds, "when she came over for our help, she was crying."

Buttercup looks up, searching for Butch's face. But he has his back to her. It's completely dark now, and the stars are brilliant white clusters of light behind his head.

"I don't know your sisters very much. But I know siblings. And I know you. It wasn't the face of someone who never wanted to see her sister again. And it wasn't the face of someone carrying out some mechanical sense of duty either. Maybe you should look Blossom in the eyes before you make and judgments about what you'll find behind them... But, fuck, what do I know?" She can tell he's grinning at her, even in the dark, even not facing her. "She's _your_ sister."

Buttercup is looking up at him like he might be salvation – in the last place she'd ever expected to find it. Or maybe she had, she thinks, and that is why she'd brought herself here. _You knew, you __hoped__._

"Next time, if you still haven't moved, I'll bring you a quarter pounder with cheese. Extra pickles, right?"

Then he rockets off into the night, a viridian comet against the stars.

**[X]**

As it ends up, he doesn't need to bring her that quarter pounder. Somehow, after he leaves, Buttercup finds her way back home. It takes her another half a day, but when she walks in through the front door, the Professor drops the phone and the map he'd been pouring over and runs to her, clobbering her into a hug before she can even make it through the doorway. He starts crying almost immediately, while Buttercup notices for the first time that his carbon-black hair has started graying around the tops of his ears. She thinks its cool that he'll gray from the temples like a badass instead of going from the top like a wussie.

Her sisters follow not long after, super sonic hearing attuned to the sound of the Professor's sobs like freakin' homing devices on crack. Blossom takes a little bit longer than Bubbles, who had only been searching South America. The Pink Puff had in fact, been combing nearby asteroid belts.

And then they all start fucking crying on her. As in, _literally_ on her, soaking her clothes and hair with tears. And Bubbles squeezes them so hard that the Professor's vertebrates start crackling. 'Why do you smell like _sulfur_?' The blue puff sniffs. And Blossom takes her green sister's head in her hands and holds it there, foreheads touching, nose tips skimming wet. And Buttercup stares into Blossom's brimming pink eyes, her own hands shaking at her sides.

And Buttercup finds there only what Butch says she would.

She finds there –

Only love.

-Fin-


End file.
